Hype Cycle was conceptualized by Jackie Fenn in 1995, while working for Gartner as an Analyst and Gartner subsequently after years insisting and lobbying with the industry started with the annual Hype cycle visualization for new and emerging technologies and branded the tool as Hype Cycle. Hype Cycle is technology life cycle stages Graphical demonstration passing through Conception to Maturity to Widespread adoption.
There are pre dominantly 5 stages in a Hype cycle but then we can build sub stages as well within those broad stages of a technology lifecycle. Mostly used by marketing and technology business decision making, businesses can choose the level of risk and comfort for each stage in the Hype Cycle and at what stage of the life cycle the product or service is currently at.
The hype cycle classifies five overlapping technology lifecycle stages:
1. Technology Trigger: This is the stage where an Idea for a product, service or new technology is envisaged, a prototype may exist but not in functioning state and no market data, study exists as such on these new technologies, products or services but the prospective enhancement / change / innovation that they may cause will impact the how the media and market reacts and this could be supported by the proof of concept demonstrations as well.
Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage: Unsupervised Learning in AI, Supervised learning where Manual Intervention is required and limited data sets can be tagged and mapped and need a lot of effort and time. Unsupervised Learning where the Model / algorithm doesn’t needs manual tagging or Intervention. The Model works independently and learns on its own to tag future data in shape of images and Videos. The technology is still being explored and is conceptualized to be deployed in working environment.
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations: The Tech Life cycle stage in Hype Cycle where the functional prototype / technology is implemented by early adopters , creators , inventors , is called the Peak of Inflated Expectations .At this stage a lot of publicity on successful or unsuccessful implementations may be attached with the outcomes.
Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage: Launch and Stick landings (Vertical landings) for Space Shuttles like SpaceX Starship SN10 rocket. The technology intends to reuse the Payload carrier and the Fueling rocket, thus reducing the cost and timelines for subsequent travels into Space for Mankind and delivering payload. Both SpaceX, Blue origin, Virgin Galactic are some of the pioneering organizations leading the race to Mankind Space Tourism.
3. Trough of Disillusionment: At this stage the shortcomings and not meeting the expected results leading to failures may lead to disappointment in the product/ technology and will see a fall through of some early adopters, inventors and investors. The other may still continue with further refining the functionality and the adaptability of the product / technology while addressing the existing problems successfully. Also new investments and market sentiment will also depend upon the future state of the technology.
Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage: Google was very enthused in its launch of the giant Balloon internet services, “Loon”. The experiment was to delivery low cost wide high speed internet services in tough terrain areas across the world. The Project is being scrapped as it could meet the desired objectives of cost optimization for a long term sustainable business.
4. Slope of Enlightenment: The stage of the Hype cycle where product / technology Beta and early versions start showing potential expected outcomes and are accepted by the industry and gets adopted by the companies, peers OR gets tested in control environment .At this stage the inventors, producers will start working on the next gen version of the products / technologies, where it can be integrated with existing services and platforms.
Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage: Hydrophobic Farming is one such example, when using acres of lands producing food feed on pesticides , Organic or Inorganic will become unsustainable , Urban Farming , utilizing less space , more energy and resource efficient is the answer in Agritech industry . The industry is expected to grow from $9.7 Billion in 2019 to $17 Billion by 2025 with almost 14% CAGR.
5. Plateau of Productivity: The Hype Cycle phase where the successful and effective implementation is adopted on a large scale across industry spectrum, its differentiation yet adaptability becomes widely implemented. Standards are build up around the frame work of the technology for a sustained, standard understanding of the market and market players around this practice / technology.
Technologies / Products are this Hype Cycle Stage: Mobile Internet, the technology is past 4G and most of the Developed countries have started rolling out 5G interest services that aim to provide data transfer speed of 20 Gbps at peak and 100Mbps at average. This is almost 100 times faster than 4G, which is the predominant cellular phone broadband network speed.